Hannan Abu-Hussein: Kasr Hdoud / Broken Barriers

For the first time, it features her large-scale installations, showcasing the wide range of materials employed in her work, all drawn from the fabric of life itself: a wall-mounted piece of unprocessed sheep's fleece stretching from floor to ceiling; a stack of traditional blankets, and a tangled network of vein-like tubes through which olive oil flows like lifeblood. Screened alongside her concrete works—a material now synonymous with her practice—is a video showing the artist's mother whispering chant-like words into her ear in a meditative rhythm. The material diversity is complemented by distinctive techniques, primarily rooted in manual labor and the reiteration of a basic form or object. Repetition and replication, central to her work, function as bearers of testimony in the form of an array of concrete stilettos, or hundreds of iron combs—corresponding with the number of Arab women murdered in Israel. Together, these elements amplify the sense of pain and defiance against the cycles of coercion imposed on Abu-Hussein as a woman, a Palestinian, and an artist in a traditional, patriarchal society.

Challenging the prevalent binary reading that contrasts the “East”—seen as a lush entity marked by excess and diversity—with the “West,” associated with sharpness, precision, and reduction, Abu-Hussein’s installation Broken Barriers dissolves fixed boundaries, revealing her affinity with the post-minimalist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. While minimalist artists created abstract layouts of geometric forms using non-artistic materials devoid of narrative (such as aluminum), post-minimalist artists (primarily women like Eva Hesse) employed materials laden with history, use, and meaning. Abu-Hussein’s works presented here hold both poles. On the one hand, they evoke the duplication, repetition, and seriality of minimalism; on the other, the use of charged materials infuses each piece with narrative depth, resonating with social customs, personal history, and weighty political issues.

In her role as a lecturer and art teacher, Abu-Hussein spearheads social and artistic projects that engage with the stratified identity of the Palestinian woman and the intercultural links enabled by art. A retrospective gaze upon her body of work reveals a path forged with tenderness, struggle, and determination.